My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered in 1985 in Boring, Ore. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of colored, fragrant hybrids between Lilium longiflorum (the Easter lily) and Asiatic lilies, suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
I achieved the desired objective by intercrossing a slightly fertile embryo-cultured seedling from (Lilium longiflorum `Ace` (unpatented).times.`Sterling Star` (unpatented)) with `Red Carpet` (unpatented). The seed parent was the diploid form of the Dutch cultivar `Longistar` (unpatented), which had limited commercial distribution in the Netherlands and the United States. This cultivar does not normally produce fertile seed; it can be used in breeding only if its embryos are artificially cultured. The pollen parent, the Canadian hybrid `Red Carpet`, was commercially available in the United States as a garden lily and pot-plant cultivar during the 1970's, but it was not widely grown. The embryo that produced `Coral Fashion` was artificially cultured.
The flowers of my new lily are characterized by an very large, fragrant, deep coral upfacing to outfacing flowers with an "open bell" form with slightly clawed tepals, quite narrow at the base and broadest just below the midpoint of the bud and flower, and with tepal tips flattening but never truly recurving. This unique flower form is intermediate between the trumpet-form of Lilium longiflorum and the "flat-faced" Asiatic hybrid form with recurved tepal tips. The new clone possesses unusually strong, stout, almost woody stems. In addition, the clone possesses to a high degree desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor. The clone is a good grower and propagator, as observed at Boring, Ore.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Boring, Oreg. Successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.